WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate is set to vote today on a proposal to strip federal Title X funding from the abortion giant Planned Parenthood and reallocate it to other women’s health facilities.
The move comes after several undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress brought light to Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby organs to scientific companies for research. The organization has acknowledged that it has a “donation” program for mothers, but denies making money from the bodies of the dead children.
However, undercover footage from the Center for Medical Progress shows top Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price of organs, with one abortionist quipping, “I want a Lamborghini!” and other advising, “Per item works better so we can see how much we can get out of it.”
A video of Savita Ginde, medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, was released last week, in which she expressed concern that if “antis” learned of the information it might be seen as illegally “selling fetal parts across states” and pro-life Americans would “really run with it and make it really negative.”
Some have asserted that the videos are “misleading” because the hours-long footage of each encounter was edited to eight-minute segments to be more viewer-friendly. However, others believe that Planned Parenthood and others involved with the organization’s sale of fetal organs are trying to discredit or downplay the videos in order to avoid having to face accountability for their actions.
In an article released today by TIME, U.S. Senators Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rand Paul of Kentucky and James Lankford of Oklahoma explained why they have presented Senate Bill 1881 to strip Title X funding from Planned Parenthood and give it to other organizations that provide women’s health services.
“Planned Parenthood is the nation’s single largest provider of abortion services. Through a series of videos that have been recently released about Planned Parenthood’s callous harvesting operation, the realities of abortion have become public,” they wrote.
“Polite company does not want to discuss what really happens to children in an abortion clinic,” the Senators continued. “Tiny arms, legs and organs are placed in dishes and picked apart with tweezers. Unborn babies are seen as valuable—not as a new life, but as the source of parts eligible for sale.”
They said that the videos expose the double-speak of the abortion industry, as abortionists seek to tell women that the procedure is merely the removal of “tissue” one minute and then turn around to specifically name the now harvested human organs available for purchase to biologic corporations.
“If they are human organs outside of the womb, they had to be human inside the womb,” the Senators wrote. “It is disingenuous for Planned Parenthood to say in one moment that it is just fetal tissue, but in another moment acknowledge that it is human baby organs to be harvested and sold for medical research. Children in the womb are still children.”
The White House says that Obama will likely veto the legislation should it pass, although spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that he has not personally seen the videos.
“Certainly a rider that on a wholesale basis defunds Planned Parenthood, which is the proposal from some Republicans in the House, is certainly something that would draw a presidential veto,” he said.